If You Can't Take The Heat, Make A Salad For Dinner

Recipes Keep Cook Cool

Salad Days

Next time you fire up the grill, cook enough to have leftovers. An extra tuna steak can be used in this white bean and tuna salad.

All you want for dinner is a tall glass of ice water.

Appetites wane in hot weather. Heat and humidity send us searching for ways to cool our bodies, our temperatures and our homes. The oven, which adds a comfortable warmth to the kitchen in winter, suddenly looks like a fire-breathing dragon when the mercury hits 90.

Refresh your palates and keep the kitchen cool with salads that need little or no cooking. With the addition of protein sources such as meat, fish or cheese, crunchy fiber foods and those starchy cousins, rice or pasta, the salad becomes a one-dish meal.

Summer is the time to take advantage of Connecticut-grown produce -- fresh vegetables that can be eaten raw or steamed in the microwave. Fruits such as melons, peaches and berries have a particular sweetness unmatched by their long-distance counterparts.

One way to lessen kitchen duty is to plan ahead. If your family normally eats a broiler/fryer chicken, move up to a roaster that weighs more than 4 pounds, and you'll have chicken for salad already cooked. Grill an extra beef, salmon or tuna steak or two, and the makings of tomorrow night's one-dish meal can be chilling in the refrigerator.

In fact, the mixed-up, marinated concept of a salad gives leftovers a new look. While giving my refrigerator that "what can I whip up for dinner?" perusal a few weeks ago, I pulled out some roasted chicken breast, cooked wild rice with scallions, a few roasted peppers in garlic and oil and some stalks of celery. I chopped the celery and peppers, cubed the chicken and mixed all of the ingredients with a favorite salad dressing (recipe below) from "The Yachting Cookbook" (Crown, $30). The dressing, which authors Elizabeth Wheeler and Jennifer Trainer use in a Chinese chicken salad in the book, tastes equally good on land.

Whether concocting leftovers or cooking from scratch,

ingredients that add color and texture will make the dish more interesting and satisfying. Water chestnuts, celery and nuts add crunch. Raw red pepper chunks, red onion and carrots contribute the same as well as color. Chopped apple, nectarines or peaches add a touch of sweetness to vegetable mixtures.

When preparing lettuce greens and vegetables for a salad, make sure they are washed well to remove any grit, and thoroughly dried. Dry greens by shaking off the water (a salad spinner also does the trick), then pat them dry or wrap them in a clean dish towel.

Dip cut fruit such as apples or peaches in lemon juice to prevent browning. Fresh fruits benefit from last-minute preparation. Delicate types such as raspberries and strawberries get soggy if washed and left to sit until serving time in the refrigerator.

A trip to a pick-your-own farm or the farmers' market, a well-stocked pantry and the amount of time the cook chooses to stand over the grill can determine your choice of salads.

Below are a variety of recipes for main-dish salads. However, there are all sorts of combinations that a little imagination, rather than a recipe, can produce.